Disney has announced an ad-supported tier is coming to Disney+ later this year. It will be available to folks in the US at first and there are plans to expand it to other countries starting in 2023.
The company hasn’t revealed pricing for the new tier, though it’ll cost less than the current ad-free plan. That costs $8 per month in the US. Nor did Disney say in its press release exactly when the ad-supported version of the service will be available.
Disney believes the move will help it reach its target of having between 230 million and 260 million Disney+ subscribers by the end of its 2024 fiscal year. As of the end of 2021, the streaming service had 129.8 million subscribers, a third of whom are in the US and Canada.
A company called Cana has revealed what it’s calling the planet’s first “molecular beverage printer.” The idea is that, using a single cartridge of flavorings, the machine can mix one of thousands of different beverages, including juice, soft drinks, iced coffee, sports drinks, wine and cocktails.
With Cana One, which is designed to sit on a kitchen countertop, you’ll be able to select a drink from a wide range of beverage types and brands using a touchscreen. You can customize the levels of alcohol, caffeine and sugar (alcoholic and caffeinated drinks can be locked behind a PIN). Cana has teamed up with beverage brands from around the world and created its own concoctions.
A team of scientists spent three years studying popular beverages at the molecular level, Cana says. The researchers seemingly isolated the trace compounds behind flavor and aroma, and used those to create a set of ingredients that can deliver a large variety of drinks.
Cana
The system uses a “novel microfluidic liquid dispense technology” to mix the beverages. Cana says at least 90 percent of what we drink is water with flavorings, sugar and alcohol added in.
The company claims Cana One can reduce waste and associated emissions by helping people avoid bottled and canned drinks. Cana also says it can reduce water waste that’s needed to grow ingredients for things like orange juice and wine.
Cana will automatically replace ingredient cartridges (which should each last around a month) as needed at no cost. However, you’ll pay for the device’s concoctions on a per-drink basis. Each will cost between 29 cents and $3, though Cana claims the average price will be lower than bottled beverages at retailers. The system also requires sugar and spirits cartridges — both of which are replaced automatically — and a CO2 cylinder.
Cana
It remains to be seen how well the company’s claims hold up in practice, though you can reserve a Cana One now. You’ll need to plunk down $99, which is a refundable credit toward the full price. Cana One will cost $499 for the first 10,000 orders, rising to $799 after that. The company expects to start shipping the machine in early 2023.
Twitch has updated its misinformation policies and says it will ban those who frequently share falsehoods. Under the new rules, the platform will block “harmful misinformation superspreaders who persistently share misinformation on or off of Twitch,” as The New York Times first reported.
“Every day, people come together on Twitch to build communities that celebrate a variety of interests, passions, and talents,” Twitch wrote in a blog post. “We’re proud that Twitch can bring people together — but we do not believe that individuals who use online services to spread false, harmful information, have a place in our community. While these individuals are not prevalent on Twitch, they could cause significant harm if allowed on our service.”
Fewer than 100 channels will be affected by the policy at the outset, Twitch said. It sees these primarily as precautionary measures. For the platform to take action under these rules, channels must meet several criteria. “We seek to remove users whose online presence is dedicated to persistently sharing widely disproven and broadly shared harmful misinformation topics,” the policy reads.
The “Harmful Misinformation Actors” rules cover lies about COVID-19 vaccines and election fraud, as well as conspiracy theories related to dangerous medical treatments. The policy also means that those who peddle “misinformation promoted by conspiracy networks tied to violence and/or promoting violence” or share falsehoods that could put public safety at risk during emergencies risk being booted off of the platform.
Twitch says it works with independent misinformation experts like the Global Disinformation Index, along with election boards and congressional certification to assess civic misinformation claims, such as election fraud and ballot tampering.
The platform also noted to The Times that the policy applies to Russian state-run media channels that are spreading lies, though it has only spotted one of those to date. Other platforms — such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify and Reddit — have banned, labeled or limited the spread of content from Russian state media outlets over the last week amid the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
It’s notable that the policy covers actions carried out by creators outside of their Twitch streams. If you learn about a streamer who may be violating the away from Twitch, you can report them by email. Last year, the service said it would ban users for serious misconduct that took place offline or on other platforms.
The Senate will vote on the nominations of Gigi Sohn to the Federal Communications Commission and Alvaro Bedoya to the Federal Trade Commission, respectively. The Senate Commerce Committee moved forward their nominations, though the 14-14 tie means there will be an additional procedural step for each before a full Senate vote.
Democrats and Republicans each have 50 senators though Vice President Kamala Harris has a tie-breaker vote. Should Sohn and Bedoya be confirmed as commissioners, the Democrats will hold a majority in both the FCC and FTC.
The committee delayed a vote on the nominations after Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) suffered a stroke in January. Luján, whose vote was needed for Democrats to move the nominations forward, has since returned to work.
President Biden nominated Sohn at the same time he put forward Jessica Rosenworcel as FCC chair in October. While the Senate approved Rosenworcel’s permanent appointment in December, Sohn’s appointment has taken longer. As such, the FCC has been deadlocked at 2-2 along party lines, leaving Rosenworcel unable to, among other things, advance a net neutrality policy.
Opposition to the nomination of Sohn, a longtime advocate for net neutrality, has come from a number of quarters, including the Directors Guild of America. The group urged senators to vote down Sohn’s nomination due to her “hostility towards copyright law.” Sohn was previously on the board of Locast, a defunct service that rebroadcast over-the-air TV broadcast signals via the internet. She said she’d recuse herself from issues concerning retransmission consent and broadcast copyright.
In confirmation hearings, Republicans portrayed Sohn as an extreme partisan. She hit back at those assertions, arguing that she had been subject to “unrelenting, unfair and outright false criticism and scrutiny.”
The FTC, meanwhile, is in the process of reviewing some significant proposed mergers. According to reports, those include Amazon’s planned buyout of MGM and Microsoft’s bid to acquire Activision Blizzard. Reports suggest the FTC is mulling an antitrust challenge to block the Amazon-MGM deal, though it would need a majority vote to proceed with a lawsuit.
Volvo will put a wireless EV charging system through its paces as part of a program to test alternative charging options. A small fleet of electric Volvo XC40 Recharge cars will be used as taxis in Gothenburg, Sweden in a three-year pilot.
The cars are equipped with a wireless charging system from Momentum Dynamics. Charging pads will be embedded in the ground at two taxi ranks. Volvo will use 360-degree cameras to help drivers put the cars in the correct position and when they’re in the right spot, the taxis’ batteries will automatically topped up. An image shared by Momentum Dynamics showed an EV charging at a rate of 41kW.
The EVs will be on the road for more than 12 hours a day and are expected to be driven for upwards of 100,000 km (62,000 miles) per year. Volvo says this is the first durability test of its electric EVs in a commercial setting. Momentum Dynamics has also teamed up with Jaguar to test wireless charging in electric taxis in Norway.
The concept of building charging tech into roads is hardlynew, but it hasn’t exactly taken off yet. Still, researchers and engineers are working on other ways to charge EVs as they drive, so at some point in the future, drivers may never need to visit a typical charging station.
CD Projekt Red says it will stop selling its games until further notice in Russia and Belarus following the invasion of Ukraine. People in those two countries will no longer be able to buy the publisher’s own games — such as Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — or any title from CD Projekt’s GOG store.
“Today, we begin working with our partners to suspend digital sales and cease physical stock deliveries of CD PROJEKT Group products, as well as all games distributed on the GOG platform, to the territories of Russia and Belarus,” CDPR wrote in a statement on Twitter. The publisher’s games are sold on several digital platforms, including the Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch stores, as well as Steam, Epic Games Store and Google Stadia.
In a note to investors, CD Projekt said that Russia and Belarus accounted for around 5.4 percent of revenue from its own games and 3.7 percent of GOG sales over the last 12-month period.
CDPR said it “stands firm with the people of Ukraine.” The day after the invasion started, CD Projekt donated approximately $242,000 to a humanitarian group in support of the conflict’s victims.
“While we are not a political entity capable of directly influencing state matters, and don’t aspire to be one, we do believe that commercial entities, when united, have the power to inspire global change in the hearts and minds of ordinary people,” CDPR said. It acknowledged the decision will impact gamers in Russia and Belarus who aren’t involved in the invasion and perhaps oppose it, “but with this action we wish to further galvanize the global community to speak about what is going on in the heart of Europe.”
Bloober Team, the developer of games such as The Medium and Blair Witch, is blocking sales of its titles in Belarus and Russia on all platforms too. “We want to be a part of a world that doesn’t turn a blind eye to warmongering. And we won’t stay neutral when human lives are at stake,” the studio said. Like CD Projekt, Bloober Team is based in Poland, which borders Ukraine.
